How are you supposed to handle the AoP when the divisions aren't a part of McDowell's Army? Do you pile them all in to his army tab and lose their division status, or send them all piece meal into Manassas? Don't do it at all? Does the scenario start after the battle?

How are you supposed to handle the AoP when the divisions aren't a part of McDowell's Army? Do you pile them all in to his army tab and lose their division status, or send them all piece meal into Manassas? Don't do it at all? Does the scenario start after the battle?

At what point can the divisions be a part of AoP?

I believe the designed it to be this way. Organization was terrible early in the war. I placed commanders together to get as many stacks as possible into command (I think it was AoP with majority of units, then a 8 command and a 6 command stack. Left who would not fit as defenders.

How are you supposed to handle the AoP when the divisions aren't a part of McDowell's Army? Do you pile them all in to his army tab and lose their division status, or send them all piece meal into Manassas? Don't do it at all? Does the scenario start after the battle?

At what point can the divisions be a part of AoP?

They may be called divisions for historical accuracy, but they are not formed ones, as you can't build them that early. I just pile them into McDowell's army and head for Manassas. The 10NM hit if you don't take it is in the game.

They may be called divisions for historical accuracy, but they are not formed ones, as you can't build them that early.

You can form divisions right away, but fixed units are not allowed to form, so you have to wait until they unlock. And then you have to wait for the individual commanders to pass their activation check before they can create their divisions, so I recommend you send several more commanders there before the army unlocks. Then on the turn the army unlocks simply form your divisions with whatever commanders are available that pass their checks and you can head to Manassas in much better shape than trying to go in with a bunch of independent brigades.

You’ll still probably lose if the south sticks around, but your losses will be far less and your units will be in good enough shape to fight again very soon if the south tries a counter-attack.

The one thing you won’t be able to do is create a full army stack without command penalties this early. Division consolidation is the most you can hope for this early.

Jim

Edit: Another way to assure your army is in as good a shape as possible as soon as possible, is to build divisions with non-fixed units before the unlock, so on the turn your army unlocks you already have the division shells created to place the units into. Also command penalties for division creation should be gone making your troops that much more effective.

You may need to build a few militia units to use as division placeholders (divisions don’t stay active if you don’t put at least one unit inside), but that’s risky as you need most of your early manpower for replacement chits to help flesh out your armies that arrive on map at partial strength.